Kim eBook

E23 glanced up under his eyelids. ‘It
is well said,’ he muttered in a changed voice.
‘I go to drink water. Keep my place.’

He blundered out almost into the Englishman’s
arms, and was bad-worded in clumsy Urdu.

’Tum mut? You drunk? You mustn’t
bang about as though Delhi station belonged to you,
my friend.’

E23, not moving a muscle of his countenance, answered
with a stream of the filthiest abuse, at which Kim
naturally rejoiced. It reminded him of the drummer-boys
and the barrack-sweepers at Umballa in the terrible
time of his first schooling.

‘My good fool,’ the Englishman drawled.
’Nickle-jao! Go back to your carriage.’

Step by step, withdrawing deferentially and dropping
his voice, the yellow Saddhu clomb back to the carriage,
cursing the D.S.P. to remotest posterity, by —
here Kim almost jumped — by the curse of the
Queen’s Stone, by the writing under the Queen’s
Stone, and by an assortment of Gods “with wholly,
new names.

E23, affecting to misunderstand, gravely produced
his ticket, which the Englishman wrenched angrily
from his hand.

‘Oh, zoolum! What oppression!’
growled the Jat from his corner. ‘All for
the sake of a jest too.’ He had been grinning
at the freedom of the Saddhu’s tongue.
’Thy charms do not work well today, Holy One!’

The Saddhu followed the policeman, fawning and supplicating.
The ruck of passengers, busy, with their babies and
their bundles, had not noticed the affair. Kim
slipped out behind him; for it flashed through his
head that he had heard this angry, stupid Sahib discoursing
loud personalities to an old lady near Umballa three
years ago.

‘It is well’, the Saddhu whispered, jammed
in the calling, shouting, bewildered press —
a Persian greyhound between his feet and a cageful
of yelling hawks under charge of a Rajput falconer
in the small of his back. ’He has gone
now to send word of the letter which I hid.
They told me he was in Peshawur. I might have
known that he is like the crocodile — always
at the other ford. He has saved me from present
calamity, but I owe my life to thee.’

‘Is he also one of Us?’ Kim ducked under
a Mewar camel-driver’s greasy armpit and cannoned
off a covey of jabbering Sikh matrons.

’Not less than the greatest. We are both
fortunate! I will make report to him of what
thou hast done. I am safe under his protection.’

He bored through the edge of the crowd besieging the
carriages, and squatted by the bench near the telegraph-office.

’Return, or they take thy place! Have
no fear for the work, brother - or my life.
Thou hast given me breathing-space, and Strickland
Sahib has pulled me to land. We may work together
at the Game yet. Farewell!’